4/00Estimated tons of PCBs that General Electric has leaked into the Hudson River since 1977’s ban on dumping the toxin: 6.8
6/84Percentage of the U.S. population that ate at McDonald’s each day last year: 7
8/84Most books on the New York Times best-seller list at one time edited by a single editor (Michael Korda): 7
6/85Copies of Bride’s bought by the magazine’s average reader: 7
10/91Number of years that it would take to execute every American on death row, at a rate of one execution per day: 7
3/86Number of Russians who subscribe to the New York Times: 7
5/86Lifespan of a sidewalk tree in New York City (in years): 7
6/86Number of people who have barreled over Niagara Falls and survived: 7
5/87Number of the 15 novels on the New York Times March 15 best-seller list with the word “of” in the title: 7
Number of guards in New York City jails who committed suicide in 1986: 7
1/90Points by which President Reagan’s approval rating went up after he was shot in 1981: 7
5/90Number of dating services created in Magdeburg, East Germany, since last November: 7
Average percentage today: 7
6/91Percentage of Americans who say that time moves “too slowly”: 7
7/91Percentage of American junior high school students who say they have sex at least once a week: 7
10/91World’s record for the longest period of time a Life Saver has been kept intact in a human mouth, in hours: 7
2/92Estimated change in average U.S. temperatures this winter due to a volcanic eruption in the Philippines last year: -0.9° F
Estimated number of days the Washington, D.C., cherry-blossom season will be delayed this year due to the eruption: 7
2/92Number of times since 1982 that Punxsutawney Phil, the nation’s “official” groundhog, saw his shadow on February 2: 7
5/92Ratio of per capita water consumption by Israelis living on the West Bank to that of Palestinians living there: 7:1
7/92Number of the 50 highest-rated first-run programs ever broadcast on TV that were episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies: 7
6/93Percentage of the $490 million in criminal fines levied against failed S&Ls since 1989 that have been paid: 7
9/93Number of Mexicans who became billionaires last year: 7
1/94Hours the average Chinese worker must work to earn the price of an ice-cream cone at Beijing’s new Baskin-Robbins: 7
4/94Ratio of the value of contracts signed by Michael Jackson in 1993 to that of contracts canceled: 7:1
12/94Number of weeks Danielle Steel employed a full-time gift-wrapper last year for her seven children’s birthdays: 7
8/96Minimum price of a line of Al Kracht’s custom poetry, from Limerick Lane Poetryworks of Chappaqua, New York: $7
10/96Number of Constitutional amendments called for in the Republican Party platform: 7
6/97Quarts of Starbucks Java Chip ice cream found in the freezer of the Heaven’s Gate compound last March 27: 7
6/97Combined number of root canals performed last year on two Kodiak bears at the San Francisco Zoo: 7
8/97Number of months since Congress imposed a moratorium on hearing new ethics complaints against members: 6
8/97Ratio of The Lost World to Jurassic Park in the amount of screen time devoted to dinosaurs eating people: 7:1
10/97Seating capacity of the President’s new Hot Spring Grandee® hot tub: 7
11/97Months after a Hard Rock Cafe opened in Beirut last winter that the U.S. lifted its ban on travel in Lebanon: 7
3/98Ratio of chickens killed last January in Hong Kong’s flu scare to total chickens sold in the U.S. each day at KFCs: 3:2
Days of prayer that Buddhist monks and nuns devoted to the souls of slaughtered chickens last winter in Hong Kong: 7
7/98Number of field hands working at Mt. Vernon this summer as Pioneer Farmer Interns: 7
7/98Percentage of all privately owned bison in the U.S. that belong to Ted Turner: 7
1/99Number of dates since 1914 that the Jehovah’s Witnesses have predicted as the start of the apocalypse: 7
2/99Ratio of reporters who covered John Glenn’s 1998 shuttle flight to those who covered his first space flight in 1962: 7:1
2/99Weeks after DNA testing confirmed Bill Clinton’s adultery last fall that such testing confirmed Thomas Jefferson’s as well: 7
3/99Number of professional-style kitchens in the home Mike Tyson is attempting to sell: 7
6/99Number of years after the Soviet national anthem was retired that Russia’s Duma voted last March to reinstate its tune: 7
7/99Height, in feet, of a scarlet “A” a Sunnyside, Wash., woman put in her family’s yard last fall to protest her father’s adultery: 7
9/99Ratio of the price in South Africa of a month’s worth of U.S. AIDS drugs to what Indian-made drugs would cost: 7:1
11/99Number of months that a Christian group has trained a camera on Jerusalem’s Golden Gate, hoping to film Christ’s return: 7
1/00Number of the universe’s spatial dimensions of which physicists now believe we are unaware: 7
2/00Days after China announced it would begin acquiring offensive weapons that it was accepted into the WTO last fall: 7
4/00Years it took Afghanistan to restore its international phone links after civil war disabled them in 1993: 7
5/00Number of TV game shows hosted by Mike Wallace before beginning his full-time journalism career: 7
7/00Percentage of Icelanders who have declined including their DNA in a private company’s national genetic database: 7
3/01Chance that a U.S. Gulf War vet has reported a health problem to the government’s Gulf War Syndrome programs: 1 in 6
Chance that a vet’s reported symptoms have yet to be diagnosed: 1 in 6
Number of the 8 experts most recently appointed to study the syndrome who were medical professionals: 2
Number of the 8 who were current or former members of the military: 7
5/02Minutes from nuclear armageddon shown on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”doomsday clock” this year: 7
Minutes by which this differs from the time published set on the clock in 1947, despite 17 adjustments since then: 0
12/02Number of Kurdish members of Turkey’s parliament jailed in 1994 when their party was declared illegal there: 7
12/02Average number of people killed per week by a sniper operating in suburban Maryland and Virginia this fall: 3
Average number of homicides per week during the same period in Washington, D.C.: 7
1/03Ratio of kilotonnage of U.S. bombs dropped during the Gulf War to that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima: 7:1
3/03Factor by which the percentage increase in the cost of a U.S. employee health plan since 2001 has exceeded inflation: 7
10/03Minimum number of states where tuition at one or more public universities will be raised by at least 20 percent this year: 7
10/03Number of Democratic legislators absent for this year’s 213-210 vote restricting workers’ overtime-pay eligibility: 7
11/03Days after announcing this conclusion last July that the Geological Survey issued a memo discounting it: 7
11/03Number of tortoises that died of heat exhaustion at the Glasgow Zoo in one day last August: 7
1/04Number of New York Times articles about Pfc. Jessica Lynch that were written by Jayson Blair: 7
8/04Rank of Ronald Reagan among U.S. presidents since 1945 with the highest average approval rating while in office: 7
12/04Number of companies in which Tom Ridge holds stock that have a contract with the Department of Homeland Security: 7
9/05Months after his 2004 defeat that Ralph Nader said the Democratic Party had made him feel “like a nigger ”: 7
9/06Months that an Idaho man has checked out his library’s copy of The Joy of Gay Sex, to prevent others from seeing it: 7
Number of additional copies that the library has received unsolicited since this was first reported: 7
5/08Number of different e-cards that a nonprofit website offers for informing sexual partners of their exposure to an STD: 7
Ratio of the number of scabies cards sent so far to the number of chlamydia cards: 2:1
7/08Number of the forty-three national elections held worldwide since December 2007 whose results were contested: 7
8/08Percentage of Americans who say that they or someone in their family has married in order to get health insurance: 7
10/86Miles of runway the U.S. military has built in Honduras since 1983: 7.3
Number of racquetball courts it has built there: 1
1/95Annual number of high school students, per 1,000, involved in weapons offenses at U.S. public schools: 3.8
10/96Years a California rat retailer used the name Rats R Us before Toys ‘R’ Us threatened to sue: 2
Price charged for a “jumbo” rat by the newly christened Rat Paradise: $7.50
4/97Net change in the capital-gains tax rate under Republican presidents since 1960, in percentage points: +7.5
Net change in the rate under Democratic presidents: -4.5
11/84Number of years it takes for the information stored in the world’s libraries and computers to double: 8
10/85Salvadoran union activists murdered this year: 8
Percentage of the federal budget that actually is: 1
2/86Percentage of the babies born to unmarried white women under 25 that are given up for adoption: 8
11/86Average number of South Africans detained every hour since the government declared a state of emergency: 8
6/87Percentage of Americans between the ages of 8 and 17 who say they have five or more living grandparents: 8
Number of those days that were Wednesdays: 4
6/88Number of deaths in America, since 1981, caused by vending machines having fallen on people who shook them: 8
Percentage who say that Michael Dukakis is: 8
10/88Number of the last 10 presidential elections that were won by the taller candidate: 8
11/88Number of the 10 states with cuts in personal income taxes between 1986 and 1987 that had Democratic governors: 8
6/89Percentage of all oil spilled in tanker accidents during the past year that is accounted for by the Exxon spill: 8
Percentage change, from 1987 to 1988, in the number of newspaper and magazine articles about AIDS: -36
1/90Number of Latin American countries that have become democracies during the 1980s: 8
1/90Percentage of children in 1988 who said that Pee-wee Herman was “highly qualified” to be president: 8
Percentage who said that Michael Dukakis was “highly qualified”: 8
5/90Ratio of women who buy Mother’s Day cards to men who do: 5:1
Ratio of women who buy Father’s Day cards to men who do: 8:1
2/91Number of years since 1980 in which increases in blue-collar wages have failed to keep up with inflation: 8
4/91Estimated percentage of the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez that has been removed from the environment: 8
9/91Percentage of the references to male tennis players made by TV sportscasters that use the player’s first name only: 8
Percentage of the references to female tennis players that do: 53 [see page 38]
1/92Number of members of the Cossacks, a Moscow motorcycle gang: 8
Number of motorcycles they own: 1
1/93Average number of crimes against foreigners each day in Germany during the first six months of 1992: 8
1/93Ratio of the average tax levied on a gallon of gas sold in Europe to that on a gallon sold in the United States: 8:1
3/93Ratio of the number of Czechs who have no religious affiliation to the number of Slovaks who have none: 8:1
4/93Number of months since budget cuts at the Bureau of Labor Statistics eliminated government tracking of layoffs: 8
4/93Average percentage of bank deposits in a minority community that are reinvested in the neighborhood: 4
6/93Amount by which the price of a pair of J. Crew broken-in jeans exceeds the price of a pair of regular J. Crew jeans: $8
9/93Number of TV stations that have refused to air a consumer group’s ad advocating a Canadian-style health-care system: 8
10/93Number of trips Bob Dole has made to New Hampshire and Iowa so far this year: 8
Number of the three tax increases supported by Ronald Reagan or George Bush that Dole voted for: 3
10/93Average life span of a hairdo on the head of Hillary Rodham Clinton since last November, in weeks: 8
8/94Average unemployment rate during the 1980s in the ten states with the largest number of immigrants: 6
Average unemployment rate in the ten states with the fewest immigrants: 8
2/96Average change in a Democratic president’s approval rating after sending troops into a new conflict, in points: +2
Average change in a Republican president’s approval rating: +8
2/96Place for which Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky are tied, among the ten political leaders Russians most trust: 8
4/96Average amount by which the I.Q. of an 8-year-old who was breast-fed exceeds that of one who was not, in points: 8
5/96Number of years it took Bob Dole to agree to sign the “no new taxes” pledge he signed last April: 8
7/96Average number of neuro-active drugs Timothy Leary has ingested each day this year, according to his Web site: 8
11/96Number of weeks Bill Gates served as a congressional page in 1972: 8
12/96Number of ethnic restaurants Bill Clinton sampled at last July’s Taste of Chicago: 8
2/97Number of minor planets named after rock musicians: 8
5/97Number of microphones installed in Redwood City, California, last August as part of its “Urban Gunfire Location System”: 8
6/97Number of Russia’s 97 army divisions that are combat-ready, according to security chief Alexander Lebed: 8
Average number to be launched per second this year: 8
8/97Points by which Frank Gifford’s approval rating exceeds that of Newt Gingrich: 8
8/97Number of films to be released by the end of the year in which Larry King plays himself: 8
2/98Percentage of Americans who believe they are more likely to cheat at cards than Bill Clinton or Al Gore: 8
9/98Ratio of miles of logging and other roads in U.S. national forests to the total length of the interstate highway system: 8:1
9/98Number of years an independent counsel has been investigating Ronald Reagan’s Department of Housing: 8
5/99Average duration in hours of the stupor induced in Japanese beetles by the consumption of geraniums: 8
6/99Number of pups that Bob Dole’s dog Leader has sired with Strom Thurmond’s dog Chelsea Marie: 8
10/99Minimum number of U.S. Army bases in which space has been reserved for Wiccan soldiers’ seasonal rites: 8
1/00Factor by which Microsoft’s average monthly campaign contribution in 1999 exceeded its monthly contribution in 1995: 8
Number of these that were begun in the name of the Catholic Church or to reinstate a deposed monarch: 7
3/00Number of states that introduced legislation forbidding discrimination against motorcylists last year: 8
6/00Number of “marriage studies” majors learning “the art of getting and staying married ” last term at a Pennsylvania college: 8
8/00Minimum number of Haitian politicians assassinated since 1994’s U.S. military intervention: 8
12/00Ratio of the number of attacks on U.S. citizens or property in Latin America last year to those in the Middle East: 8:1
3/01Number of the last 9 presidential elections in which Montana voted Republican: 8
4/01Percentage of U.S. men who say they have neglected their sex lives because of consumer electronics: 8
7/01Factor by which the number of Catholics in Latin America exceeds the number in Italy: 8
11/01Factor by which the number of West Bank houses demolished by Israel this year exceeds the number demolished last year: 8
4/03Months after the fall of the Taliban that the United States began on-site assessment of Afghanistan’s natural resources: 8
10/03Number of the U.N.’s 15 ongoing peacekeeping missions that have been in operation for at least a decade: 8
3/04Days after Italian magistrates began investigating food conglomerate Parmalat last December that its former CEO was jailed: 8
7/04Number of days this year that the Small Business Administration’s largest loan program shut down for lack of funds: 8
10/04Number of its international workers that Doctors Without Borders has lost to political violence in its 34-year history: 8
Number of them killed in Afghanistan in June: 3
6/05Factor by which the average viral load in “socially inhibited” HIV+ men exceeds that in “outgoing” men, in a UCLA study: 8
12/05Number of the 1,035 confirmed Hurricane Katrina‒related deaths that were caused by gunfire: 8
5/06Number of U.S. cities and towns so far that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush: 8
6/06Ratio of the average manufacturing wage in the United States to that in Mexico, before NAFTA took effect in 1994: 6:1
Ratio today: 8:1
9/06Minimum number of states that have received telemarketing calls on their federally issued emergency hot lines: 8
7/07Number of U.S.-run Iraqi reconstruction projects declared successfully “complete” that inspectors visited this year: 8
Number from this sample that were found not to be functioning: 7
10/07Ratio of the number of calories in a candy corn kernel to the number in a real corn kernel: 8:1
11/07Number of the top ten TV shows watched by African Americans in 1997 that were also among the top ten shows overall: 1
Number today: 8
1/08Estimated number of tons of CO2 released on New Year’s Eve from all the champagne bottles uncorked by Americans: 8
Number of minutes it takes all 13,000 New York City cabs to release this much: 7
7/08Estimated percentage of Africa’s elephants poached each year before the 1989 ban on ivory trade: 7
Estimated percentage today, under the ban: 8
9/08Minimum number of times that journalists and politicians on TV have referred to Barack Obama as “Osama”: 8
Times they have referred to Osama bin Laden as “Obama”: 8
9/08Number of the twelve original members of Sha Na Na who hold advanced academic degrees: 8